


solar flares

by ThinkingCAPSLOCK



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Falling In Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5366675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThinkingCAPSLOCK/pseuds/ThinkingCAPSLOCK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun is the most important source of energy for life, and Bokuto needs someone to shine on. </p><p>Akaashi wants to absorb as much as he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	solar flares

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dimanchemieux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimanchemieux/gifts).



> does someone ever casually mention something to you, and the idea sticks, and you're a thousand words deep in the idea before you surface again? 
> 
> enjoy.
> 
> edit jan2016: thank you to my friend obliviousham/holly for this [lovely fanart!](http://hollymcgillis.tumblr.com/post/136509599755/a-gift-for-mocaw-8d-the-ship-that-brought-us) if you like this fic, you will LOVE this pic.

* * *

 

**Bokuto is a star.**

Akaashi is fresh faced, awkward limbed, and serious minded when he shows up for the first practice, and even with all that, he spots Bokuto in an instant.

Standing on the other side of the gym, arms crossed, teeth flashing sharp and white between smiles and laughs. His hair, stretching to the heavens, striped and spiked and starched. He's miles away, miles of linoleum and conversation and experiences. Even from that distance, his light still hits Akaashi right between the eyes. A flicker in the darkness, a twinkle, impossibly unobtainable.

For the first few weeks, that's how he remains. Akaashi gazes into the void of the regular players, into Bokuto's distant energy that he just barely gets glimpses of. The player across the gym. The guy who hits a spike square into the first years' faces three times in a row. The last player to leave the court every night. A shining beacon through the gym window at ten eighteen p.m.

Akaashi is fascinated. He follows Bokuto's movements in the sky, from great distance, from first period to lunch to practice to home. He's the first one Akaashi looks for at the start of practice, and the last he sees at the end. Akaashi tracks how he fits with the third year setter, with the middle blockers, with the libero, and the constellations and patterns they make during matches. He memorizes each position for each time of the year.

And then Bokuto travels light years and galaxies and ends up standing next to him.

At first, it's just for extra practice, and Akaashi knows he's being trapped and dragged into it when no one else will. But he lets himself fall into space. He lets the gaps and years and miles close around them with each late night, with each stargazing experience, with each time he twists and sees the split second impact of Bokuto's spike clearing the net. With every conversation in the locker room and hair ruffle during a practice match (even when Akaashi is scoring against him).

He catches Bokuto's smiles and compliments and dedication and sets their brilliance in the sky beside him, so he sees them all at once in a private galaxy in the back of his mind.

* * *

 

**Bokuto is a sun.**

When he makes captain, Bokuto becomes even brighter, even larger, even livelier and ever present. He rises at the start of practice, yelling and shouting with the coach. He hovers, midday, mid-spike, trying his straight over and over until he gets one right.

He sets in the dark corners of the gym, in being called out for a pinch server, in fumbling Akaashi's set for the third time in a row. His nights are short in matches but long after school, in the depths of the ocean of college prep and stress, and Akaashi does his best to listen and remind Bokuto what it's like during the daylight.

Bokuto ranges in colours from reds of sweat and exhaustion after practice, to the golden yellows of his eyes scanning the first and second years (and lingering a second extra on Akaashi). He's bright white with fresh bleach in his hair, and when he pulls his uniform over his head. He's the sun peeking around the rims of clouds and bringing a splash of brilliance to the greys during the clouds of a loss, and he's the entire sky in a victory.

Akaashi takes his energy from him. He bathes in the glow the moment he steps into the gym. The team grows stronger each time they stand by Bokuto, and each time they work through the darkness to bring him back. Bokuto needs someone to shine on as much as they need him to shine for them.

He grows a bit bigger, a bit brighter, every time he instructs or leads or yells about his perfect hit. Akaashi drags out the days longer and longer, set after set, the two of them at practice until the gym lights shut off and the only source of brightness is Bokuto's strong voice screaming as he fumbles to take down the net.

Akaashi wants to absorb as much as he can. He wonders how much he can grow this way.

* * *

 

**Bokuto is _the_ Sun.**

Akaashi catches himself one step too close to Bokuto more times than he can count. The small, two-inch boundary between a respectable distance to talk to his captain, and the intimate distance that he isn't sure they've known each other long enough for. That step somewhere towards discomfort, where Akaashi always expects Bokuto to pull back, to ask for another serve, to tug his collar, awkward and hot, and brush Akaashi away.

Instead, Bokuto leans his head in a bit closer to talk about the first years. To whisper a secret about how he thinks Akaashi has been doing very well today (even if he's said so three times already). How he thinks Akaashi should train up his dump shot, because his reactions are so fast no one could call it if he just does it a few hundred more times. He ends with a pat on the shoulder and that grin that brings fire into the air, that makes Akaashi avert his eyes to the side from its intensity.

And Akaashi keeps being drawn back in for more.

He hovers around Bokuto's classroom near lunch (and he tells himself it's not to interrupt the third years, but to talk about tactics for their practice match tomorrow, and when Bokuto comes out to see him and leans on the door and looks down at him and smirks, it's just how Bokuto is to everyone). He hovers around the lockers after practice, even though he's long since changed, because Bokuto is busy throwing his wet socks and trying to get them to stick to the ceiling.

He stays close, too close, that little extra step in, when Bokuto offers to walk him home.

It's cold, the dead of winter, and their breath is thick white clouds in the air, and the wind whisks it away and scrapes their skin. Standing by Bokuto, it hardly matters. It's as warm and bright as the summer solstice, and Akaashi can't help but stay in close orbit. He keeps his eyes ahead, because Bokuto's too close, too warm, and you can never look directly at the Sun.

Their hands wrap together, naturally, slowly, absently, and Bokuto's fingers without mittens are a solar flare against Akaashi's palm. The burn travels up to his cheeks and ears, but he doesn't let go. Even as Bokuto leans in too close (even further than that extra step) and tells him his face is redder than Mars, he cannot bring himself to look.

He'd be any celestial body he could just to catch even a sliver of Bokuto's shine on his skin. When Bokuto leans in to kiss his cheek, Akaashi turns his face towards his Sun, and catches it in his mouth.


End file.
